lowlydog wrote:Some rituals if practiced as intended can help develope concentration, but concentration will not liberate, one must then direct awareness towards the mind/matter phenomenon for insights to arise. Insight is liberative. One could do 100,000 prosterations with blind faith and be no further along the path. Or one may fully experience one breath and experience total liberation.

Some "rituals" are engineered to allow concentration AND insight to arise. Whether a breath, or a prostration....."rituals" are not merely aids to developing concentration. They're "Scientific," even...to borrow a word you seem to like. Perhaps that which appears "religious" can in fact be "Scientific?" Will you grant that possibility?

May any merit generated by on-line discussionBe dedicated to the Ultimate Benefit of All Sentient Beings.

lowlydog wrote:Some rituals if practiced as intended can help develope concentration, but concentration will not liberate, one must then direct awareness towards the mind/matter phenomenon for insights to arise. Insight is liberative. One could do 100,000 prosterations with blind faith and be no further along the path. Or one may fully experience one breath and experience total liberation.

Have you ever practiced prostrations? Obviously not, coz if you had then you would know that one could do 100,000 breaths mechanically and be no further along the path, or one may fully experience one prostration and experience total liberation. Prostrations also give rise to insight. Why? Because ALL and ANY phenomenon can be an object of awareness: breath, body, visual object (kasina), mental object (deity), sound (mantra), etc...

I think its time to admit that you just don't know what your talking about. Its not a bad thing, really- I"ll be the first to admit that I am an ignoramus. If you think that prostrations and deity yoga have anything to do with worshipping gods and external beings then you are completely naive and mistaken. Your ideas about these things are so far from the truth that you really have no place to be passing judgements. You contradict yourself in every post. Rather than continue to dig yourself deeper into this hole, why not just admit that you don't know the first thing about these practices and move on? If you are as stable in your practice as you say you are, this shouldn't be that hard.

Rite and ritual is a part of this round and round, you can't run away from it any more than you can run away from suffering, you can use either as a door, but running away from them is as much a waste of time as obsessing on them.

PS prostrations are some of the most direct confrontation you can have with all of your pride, with your false sense of self, since starting them they hit at stuff that that I never got through just seated meditations, in a very direct way, immediately. Seriously, in a few seconds I was able to gain insight into some of my junk than I ever did in a few years of Zazen. So effective it was actually alarming. For some i'm sure it's the opposite, and that's as it should be.

They are far from just being a meaningless ritual though, and only someone who has only seen them from outside would believe that.

gregkavarnos wrote:... Because in trying to sound wise, in your closing statement, you actually contradcited the entire point you were trying to make.

Where can this "trying to sound wise" and this "trying to make a point" be found? In the forms aka words, which are not the mere ideas that caused them or in the ideas that have arisen upon the eye contacting these forms aka "reading"?If former words entail affirmative feeling of "a point" then these may have not been appropriately chosen. Thank you for showing. If later words entail feeling that the formerly felt affirmed point is contradicted then these may have been chosen appropriately with reference to the former having been chosen inappropriately.

Pseudo-mystical gibberish. You're trying too hard again.

Applying honest words that neither support nor evoke belief is difficult. Painting or playing music may be an alternative means of expression avoiding non intended side effects due to not appealing to the intellect in the first place.

Lucid and intelligent! I almost agree too! You make one fatal mistake though, music and painting may not appeal to intellect (though much art and music does) but it still appeals to mind in order to express a view.

"Pseudo-mystical gibberish." or "Lucid and intelligent! I almost agree too! " ... What does make a difference? Some may call it "like" or "dislike" ... Words ... belief is belief .... projection is projection ... "you are this or that" and "mind" ... neither can be found

lowlydog wrote:One thing should be clear-this definitely is not Buddhist religion. At the same time it is definitely the teaching of Buddha. One should understand that Buddha means an enlightened person, a liberated person. Enlightened, liberated persons will never teach a religion, they will teach an art of life that is universal. They will never establish a sect or religion. So there is no such thing as "Buddhist religion"; it is an art of life. So anybody belonging to any community, to any sect, to any religious group can easily practice it because it is an art.

All that may be subsumed under the well-known metaphor "raft" actually is religion. Religion is a raft made of ideas.

ground wrote:"Pseudo-mystical gibberish." or "Lucid and intelligent! I almost agree too! " ... What does make a difference? Some may call it "like" or "dislike" ... Words ... belief is belief .... projection is projection ... "you are this or that" and "mind" ... neither can be found

Either understanding is immmediate or there is no understanding. Understanding cannot be fabricated by adding ideas and call these "explanation". Understanding is abandonment. Craving for explanation is wanting to collect, wanting put ideas on top of ideas that have already been collected and grasped.

But there is still the raft. Explanation and raft are neither one nor two. Cultivation of consciousness.

lowlydog wrote:I have no interest in segregating teachings, my interest is in unifying(simplifying) the teachings, so all beings can get along.

But now you are saying that you do segregate some teachings. You are saying that those who teach animal sacrifice are wrong. So which is it to be? Unifying all or segregating some? More hypocrisy? What???

Then take your practices to the next level and learn to be happy in all environments jackboots and all.

Why don't you take your practice to the next level and take off the jackboots?

And just in case you did not know: Being a Buddhist (especially Vajrayana) is not the same thing as being a doormat.

Let's take a sadhana (for example). It, quite clearly, can be a device for concentration of the body (via the activity of mudra, music making and/or prostrations), speech (via mantra, prayer, dharani) and mind (via visualisations) which combine to lead one into meditative absorption.

Now, my question to you is: what is it (in your mind) that makes concentration specifically a "sutra" activity?